


Happy Anniversary

by Ironkhaleesi



Category: Sherlock BBC
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 12:14:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7617712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironkhaleesi/pseuds/Ironkhaleesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine Sherlock learning you and Moriarty were childhood sweethearts when you walk in on them having tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Anniversary

You were a bright-eyed, seven-year-old when you promised Jim Moriarty you would marry him. Under a big oak tree, in the middle of Autumn – if you closed your eyes, you could still see the orange leaves that fell around the two of you. Like the rice that people threw over the bride and groom at weddings. Except the birds wouldn’t die if they ate the leaves. 

You remembered Moriarty had told you that a wedding would be dull if a few birds didn’t drop dead. You’d said yes to his proposal anyway, and laughed a giddy, girlish, childish laugh when he’d put the candy ring on your finger. You’d looked at his smiling face and promised that you’d run away with him and marry him the moment you turned sixteen. You promised that there would be rice at the wedding. 

If someone had told you then that Moriarty would disappear the morning of your sixteenth birthday, you would have never believed them. If someone told you that you’d make a living with the world’s first consulting detective and his army doctor sidekick, you would have never believed them. If someone told you that Moriarty would become the world’s first consulting criminal and turn your life into a macabre roller coaster filled with love and hate, sex and violence … you would have believed them. 

From the moment you’d laid eyes on him, at the tender age of seven, something inside of you knew that he was dangerous. You’d known, as a child, you’d known that he would kill you and you’d give him the knife to do it. You’d die with a smile and the taste of his lips. 

As you got older, you swore to yourself you’d run the other way if you ever saw him again. Whenever his memory plagued your thoughts you’d tell yourself you dodged a bullet. You wouldn’t be alive if you’d given into the self-destructive behaviours of your seven-year-old self. 

February fourteenth was the anniversary – how cliché – of your unorthodox marriage. So every year, whilst couples and the lonely became sickly to see, you went out and bought a candy ring. You didn’t curl up in the foetal position, or cry over a long lost love like everyone else. No, you did something more deplorable. You put it on your ring finger and went about your day, sucking on it periodically. 

John never mentioned it. Sherlock used to when he discovered that it was a yearly ritual. You’d laugh and tell him you were mourning the Prince Charming that never was like every other man and woman in town. Eventually, he stopped asking. 

You knew he had to know you were lying to him. You were never a fan of cliché’s, and you never moped over men or women. If you felt like one or the other or both, you’d go out and scratch the itch – coming home in last night’s dress with mussed hair and shoes dangling from your fingertips.

Not on Valentine’s day. St Valentine’s namesake was sacred. Moriarty was the nightmare that almost happened, and you mourned his loss once a year. 

Your stomps on the stairs were heavier than usual. A pre-warning to John and Sherlock that even though you’d be smiling, inside you’d be moping all day. You raised the candy ring to your mouth – it was loose around your finger; got caught at your knuckle. 

The lock jammed and you had to jiggle your key a few times to unstick it. You pulled the candy out of your mouth with a pop! as you pushed the door open. 

“We need to get in a locksmith again,” you said. Without looking up you dumped your keys and handbag onto the nearby table, digging through your bag to find your phone. 

“As long as you promise to keep it in your pants. The last one made a formal complaint,” Sherlock drawled. 

You smiled. “She wasn’t complaining when my head was between her thighs.” You found your phone and began checking for messages. 

“No, but her husband did when he found out.”

You rolled your eyes and tossed your phone onto the table. You turned towards Sherlock, ready to ask him where John was, when you stopped suddenly in your tracks. Your thumb immediately twitched towards the candy ring to twist it on your finger. The movement didn’t go unnoticed by Sherlock’s guest. 

Sherlock slurped from his cup of tea. For a consulting detective, he was surprisingly oblivious to the tension that radiated off you as you stared at the dark haired … predator that sat across from him.

“Isn’t this a surprise,” Moriarty said. You swallowed and Sherlock finally looked at you. Frowning when he realised he was missing something. “Surprising for you, of course.” He placed his own cup on the end table beside him and stood up. He eyed you like a lion would eye a gazelle. Hungry, needy. His steps were slow as he approached you like he was trying not to scare you off. “I wouldn’t be a very good husband if I didn’t keep tabs on my wife.”

His woodsy scent washed over you. You were at a loss for words. One-half of you screamed for you to run like you’d promised yourself you would. The other half of you – the half that brought a candy ring every valentine's day – wanted to give him a knife, and make him promise to kiss you before he killed you. 

He was smiling. That dangerous smile that had captured you as a child. His eyes trailed down your neck, your torso, until it landed on the candy ring that wrapped around your finger. He reached for your hand – rubbing it with his thumb as he raised it to his mouth. His eyes met yours as he sucked at the candy. 

He pulled it from his mouth with a pop! and smiled. “Happy anniversary.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've got more fics at iavengesuperwholock.tumblr.com


End file.
